Once-great SSD manufacturer OCZ filing for bankruptcy

Assets might be acquired by Toshiba after OCZ fails to comply with its loan.

Consumer SSD pioneer OCZ Technologies has officially started the process of filing for bankruptcy. In a statement published this afternoon on Marketwatch, the company announced that this past Monday, November 25, its depository accounts were turned over to the control of Hercules Technology Growth Capital due to OCZ's failure to comply with the conditions of a loan from Hercules. Per the loan agreement's terms, OCZ has begun the bankruptcy process—with the goal of dissolution, not restructuring.

The press release notes also that OCZ is in receipt of "an offer from Toshiba Corporation to acquire substantially all of the Company's assets." The offer would transfer not just intellectual property to Toshiba but would also allow OCZ's people to remain employed.

OCZ was one of the first companies to produce and aggressively market enthusiast-targeted consumer SSDs. As solid state disks rose in popularity, OCZ was seen as a lower-cost alternative to Intel's own high performance (and high-priced) drives. However, a long string of failures across several of its product lines (most notably the high-performance Vertex family) took a lot of the shine off of OCZ's name; these days, the consumer SSD space is dominated by players like Samsung and Crucial.

Toshiba's offer to buy OCZ's remnants must first be approved by a bankruptcy court; that acceptance will hinge on a number of conditions, including whether or not the court finds that the offer "maximize[s] the value" of the company. If Toshiba's offer is not approved by a bankruptcy court, OCZ will be totally liquidated.

Lee Hutchinson
Lee is the Senior Technology Editor at Ars and oversees gadget, automotive, IT, and culture content. He also knows stuff about enterprise storage, security, and manned space flight. Lee is based in Houston, TX. Emaillee.hutchinson@arstechnica.com//Twitter@Lee_Ars